


Worth a Wound

by plumedy



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Шерлок Холмс | Sherlock Holmes (TV 2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s01e02 Rock Paper Scissors, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Story: The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 02:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8515630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: Sholto is the first one to fire.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the incredibly lovely @lossencat <33
> 
> I was delighted to write for this fandom, and I really hope you like the result *sweats*

"You've made it sound like a reward," accused Holmes, poking at Watson's shoulder with his finger. His head was slightly thrown back in agitation, the glass of his spectacles gleaming. "By this logic, when Mrs Hudson made you soup during your bout of influenza, she was encouraging you to be sick.

"And I – do you think I'm encouraging you to get shot more often?"

No, it was not like that. "It was worth many wounds" – what romantic tosh. But his readership was quite partial to obvious nonsense, especially of the romantic kind. And what is a writer to do if it pays the rent?

What is an officer to do if it protects another's honour?

The honour of every single one of those ragged, penniless invalids who had stood by his side when he confronted Sholto. The honour of those, who, like Karpinski, had only had one life – before the war. Mary's honour.

Her fate had been decided just like that – _rock, paper, scissors_ – a large milky pearl, oval and smooth like a bird's egg, cluttering to the table – and she'd had no more say in it than the little Indian boy her father had murdered.

If Watson knew one thing for certain, it was that there had been a thousand wounds, and only one of them was his.

_Oh, but it had hurt. "Hatred is your faith," he'd told Sholto, raising his revolver; and almost simultaneously, it seemed, Sholto had fired at him. It was as if that word, "hatred", burned into his flesh with all the viciousness contained within it. It was searing._

_His beautiful sky-blue uniform was ruined now; he could never wear it again; and Watson felt dimly annoyed by the realization. He somehow irrationally wished Sholto's bullet had gone into his head instead._

_There was a great commotion around him, shouts, pleas; someone was breaking down the door of the club._ Holmes _, Watson thought gratefully. He tried to turn his head to make out more of his surroundings, and his dimmed gaze stumbled across the worn soles of a pair of well-polished army boots. Sholto's boots._

_That was for the best._

_"John!"_

_All grew dark before Watson's eyes, and he heartily regretted ever teaching Holmes how to apply pressure to a wound._

_"God damn it," croaked he, feeling himself break into cold sweat. The sound of his voice seemed to agitate Holmes unduly._

_"How bad is it, John? Tell me – I need to – "_

_Watson turned his head with some effort and stared dubiously at his own shoulder. The familiar pale hands clamped over his war medals somewhat obscured the view, but he could see there wasn't too much blood. The bullet had gone in somewhere nearer the distal end of the clavicle, missing the major branches of the superior aorta and vena cava._

_It was far from a scratch and it hurt enormously, but it was a fairly benign injury._

_"I'm not going to die," he got out. "I need to go home. Please."_

_His gaze drifted to Holmes' face. It was strikingly different from the picture of contained noble suffering he would later paint in his story. Holmes looked like he could not breathe. It was the expression of a man who had just seen something incredibly fragile and precious shatter into a million pieces._

_With some effort Watson flexed his uninjured arm and blindly felt for something on his chest, his clunky fingers constantly stumbling against the rough buttons of the uniform. Someone was putting a frame on his shoulder now – Lestrade's doctor, perhaps – it was all confusion. He could no longer see. Someone's cold, bloodstained hand found his and cradled it._

_Watson closed his fingers upon it like a vice._

_"I order you," he wheezed, "order you to stay calm."_

_"Yes, Lieutenant." Holmes seemed to take that as a morbid joke. His attempt at laughter sounded terrible._

_"And Mrs Hudson mustn't know," slurred Watson. The last thing he remembered when Lestrade and Holmes dragged him onto a stretcher was noticing small fragments of glass glistening on the floor beneath Holmes' shoes. It was all that remained of Holmes' glasses._

"Exactly how did you imagine that working out, Lieutenant Watson?" Holmes gestured dangerously with a bowl of hot chicken broth. " _Ah, good evening, Mrs Hudson, we're back. A hole in Watson's shoulder? What hole?_

"She'd have kicked me out if you'd died, you know."

Watson shrugged carefully with his healthy shoulder. The tattered but very clean sheets felt pleasantly cold against his burning skin.

"You're saying it like being kicked out of the flat is the worst thing to ever happen to you," he remarked placidly.

Holmes firmly shoved the chipped edge of the bowl into Watson's mouth, preventing any further arguments.

"Drink up," he said dryly. His hands were shaking. Holmes made a terrible nurse.

_When Watson went to sleep, he dreamed of being an executioner. In front of him stretched a whole regiment he had to shoot._

_"James Kudrow," he read out, incomprehending, "Thaddeus Sholto... Peter Small..._

_"You have been tried by General courts-martial at- for marauding and murder._

_"The sentence is death."_

_He looked at the faces of his friends. Kudrow. Watson raised his revolver slowly and deliberately, taking aim through the blinding sunrays. Something sang and wailed within him; Kudrow was saying something, but it was hard to hear._

_A shot rang out. A cloud of hot dust slowly settled over the vague dark outline of the fallen body._

_The familiar soft, scarred face of Colonel Sholto was smiling at him now._

_"Killing me for a bunch of Indians, are you, John?"_

_And Watson pulled the trigger again, and again, and again._

An officer can only be judged by another officer.

_He dreamed of cutting off Peter Small's leg. Somehow, in a perverse way, he knew that he had to do it. He had to raise the yatagan and bring it down right at Small's knee joint, severing the tissue between the tibia and the femur._

_"I won't run away!" Small cried. "I won't run!"_

_And he wouldn't. Watson would make sure of that._

_He struck._

_Small let out an inhuman scream, and Watson suddenly felt something cold settle at the bottom of his stomach. He knew this voice. How had he not recognized it before? It was not Small's; it belonged to Sherlock Holmes. He had made a terrible mistake._

_And sure enough, turning to face him was Holmes, his deathly pale face covered in large beads of sweat. Watson made a convulsive step forward and noticed something glistening in the sand under the tip of his boot._

_It was Holmes' glasses, bent and fractured. They must've fallen off when Holmes had been dragged towards the cart._

"You've had a nightmare again, Watson," supplied Holmes. "It's a shame – I hoped we might finally get a decent night's sleep after you woke up the first two times."

He'd been dozing in a chair near Watson's bed, his whole frame awkwardly slumped forward and his forehead resting against the heap of Watson's bloodied blue uniform, which he was still holding in his arms.

Watson stared at the ceiling, avidly absorbing the silence and the cool of the dark room. His heartbeat was growing a little quieter now.

"I dreamed that I was killing you," he murmured flatly.

"You almost did," grumbled Holmes, "when you nearly got yourself shot to death. If my heart were any weaker, I'd be equally in need ot medical services.

"How's your shoulder?"

"All right. Lestrade's medic is not nerly as much of a hack as I thought him to be."

Holmes struggled with himself for a moment. His breathing was uneven. At last he let out one of his shaky little laughs.

"Pity," he said. "Mrs Hudson won't get to practice her sewing skills, then."

He quickly scooped Watson's hand up from the sheets and held it, staring away into the gloom. Watson could feel the smooth scars left by chemical burns on the warm fingers that held his wrist, and he felt his heart swell with something indescribable.

It wasn't worth all those wounds. But perhaps it was worth just the one.


End file.
